What makes English food so ‘ horrifique’

MY FRIEND Regis, a gourmet with an extremely wellinformed appetite, had studied the English and their eating habits, and held that he knew exactly where we were going wrong.

It starts, he said, in babyhood. The English baby is fed on bland mush, the kind of pabulum one would give to an undiscriminating chicken.

The French infant, even before he has teeth, is treated as a human being with taste buds.

Then the budding gourmet goes to school. Did I remember, he asked me, the food I ate as a schoolboy? I did indeed, with horror, and he nodded understandingly.

English school food, he said, is famously horrible. It is grey, miserable and mysterious. But at the village school attended by his five-year-old daughter, the menu for the week is posted on the noticeboard, so meals won’t be duplicated at home, and each day there is a three-course lunch.

Yesterday, for instance, little Mathilde had eaten a celery salad with a slice of ham and cheese quiche, riz aux

saucisses and baked bananas. Voila! The palate continues its education.

And so, Regis concluded, it is inevitable that the French adult has a better appreciation of food, and higher expectations, than the English adult. He’s probably right.